Toyota Land Cruisers don’t last long in self-service wrecking yards, as we saw with this ’85 earlier in the summer. When I saw this ’71 FJ40 a few weeks later, I could see the scavengers circling overhead. Now look at it!All the easy-and-valuable goodies had been grabbed during the several days between being placed on the yard and my first series of photographs, but I knew that some portable-Sawzall-armed customer would want the sheet metal.Sure enough, that’s what happened.The Chevy-based six in these trucks is pretty hard to kill and good-running examples are plentiful, so I’m guessing this engine will go to The Crusher with whatever fragments remain of the truck.

I could have sworn someone would have seen Murilee’s article when it first appeared, and somehow dragged this stray home, when it would have been a better candidate for getting it back on the road. Silly me.

Man, that thing has some SERIOUS bumpers. Compare them to the bumpers on many modern “SUV”s – I get a kick out of how so many have light assemblies IN their bumpers – that would last about 5 minutes in real off-roading.

Have you ever seen a pedestrian hit by an auto at speed? I have, quite a few times. Often, the force is so great the person is literally left shoeless. I don’t think bumper design makes much difference in that situation – the end result is bilateral open tib-fib fractures. If you take that “soft plastic” $800 cover off the front of your vehicle, you are likely to find a big iron bar underneath it.

On the other hand, I have driven through jungle in a third world country, where real bumpers and 4WD are necessary.

Yes, indeed. Environmentalists rejoice. Except they meant recycling the parts into something useful (to them), not keeping another old “gas guzzler” on the road. They would rather it was all melted down and the former owner driving a Leaf. You just can’t please some people.

A friend had one of these, he told me was a chebby engine. a 4.0 some litre eng. then a yr later he ran out of oel and the engine was cooked he confirmed her with a fork.
so he dropped a 327 vee 8 in, then he told me the v8 was saving more fuel than the old 6. the reason was probably that has more torque and pedal was pushed to the metal not as frequent as it was with orig 6cyl.
a yr or 2 later i bought a diesel /oel burner version of these machine.
the japanese tin worm were starting to commence action. i had to faced with body werk or sell her a couple of yrs later.
hind sight wish i had kept her, their value rose quite a bit, plus i would not have bought a volvo 6 cyl 240 dsl too. that was a real money pit, thought the 6 were exactly same sausage from the vw wabbit except longer, but they were for good times but not long time.

Denver yards have all the fun All I ever find in Georgia are run of the mill cars and the occasional oddball custom, like today I did find a 1993 Toyota Tercel that someone had pulled off a fairly clean El Camino treatment on.

Yup it bolts together and once it was unbolted so it could be moved then in the normal self server pay one price system it became multiple pieces that were priced accordingly so they only bought what they needed.

Always thought it was a missed opportunity for Toyota that they brought out the current FJ as such a bloated vehicle with a mile-wide blind spot instead of bringing in something closer in size to this version , which would have helped fuel economy and handling , presumably .

Agreed. I would like to see the FJ Cruiser as more of a direct Jeep competitor. Hell just import the 70 series cruiser and I would be in the Toyata Dealer tommorow. And don’t talk to me about the current monstrosity that wears the Land Cruiser badge.